Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:23:27.804Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ways of looking: the creation and social use of urban guidebooks in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

SIYEN FEI
SIYEN FEI*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 208 College Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6379, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article explores the intricate relationship between guidebooks and place-making in an early modern Chinese city, Nanjing. Despite all apparent similarity to a modern guidebook, the seventeenth-century guidebook Jinling tuyong (Illustrated Odes on Nanjing) offers no information regarding shopping, dining or lodging; instead, it catalogues all the possible experiences of sites in and around the city. Such a concentrated focus on spatial experiences brings to light an important change in the social role of guidebooks in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China. As landscape appreciation developed into an important venue for status performance and social networking, the representation of space became an integral element to the construction of urban communities. In the case of Tuyong, its images even supplied a critical source of cultural continuity for Nanjing-neses during transition between the Ming and Qing empires, a finding that sheds a new light on the links between urban space and empire and serves as a useful entry for cross-cultural comparison.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 226 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Tour guides certainly cater to a wide range of travel activities other than sightseeing. In this article, however, the idea of guidebooks is narrowly defined as handbooks that aim to facilitate sightseeing activities in order to build a specific comparative baseline, especially with early modern Europe. For a general survey of guidebook development in Europe, see Parsons, N.T., Worth the Detour: A History of the Guidebook (Charleston, 2007)Google Scholar. With regard to the practice of sightseeing and its development, see Adler, J., ‘The origins of sightseeing’, Annals of Tourism Research, 16 (1989), 7–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Literally the ‘Southern Capital’, Nanjing served as the primary capital for the first half-century of the Ming dynasty (1368–1421), when the city underwent significant expansion, with its population increasing to over half a million. However, a military coup d’état and the subsequent civil war at the beginning of the fifteenth century led the centre of gravity of the imperium to move to Beijing in 1421, radically transforming the urban character of Nanjing. The move of the court reduced Nanjing's population by more than half and left the urban economy in decline. Not until the sixteenth century did Nanjing enter a new phase of revival as a major commercial metropolis. The renaissance is mostly attributed to the general prosperity of the country and the city's close proximity to the lower Yangtzi delta, the most culturally and economically advanced area at the time.

3 Jinmin, , ‘Nanjing jinji tanxi’ (Exploration of Nanjing's economy in the Ming dynasty), Jianghai xuekan, 3 (1986), 74–8Google Scholar.

4 See Eade, J., Placing London: From Imperial City to Global City (New York, 2000), 31Google Scholar. In fact, many studies have focused on the cultural mechanism of guidebooks and the uneasy power hierarchy that was glossed over by the fragmented romantic narratives of guidebooks. For related works, see Allen, E., ‘“Money and little red books”: romanticism, tourism, and the rise of the guidebook’, Literature Interpretation Theory, 7 (1996), 213–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Culler, J., ‘The semiotics of tourism’, in Framing the Sign: Criticism and its Institutions (Oklahoma, 1989)Google Scholar; Urry, J., The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London, 1990)Google Scholar; Looker, B., Exhibiting Imperial London: Empire and the City in Late Victorian and Edwardian Guidebooks (London, 2002)Google Scholar; and Pratt, M.L., Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Gilbert, D., ‘“London in all its glory – or how to enjoy London”: guidebook representation of imperial London’, Journal of Historical Geography, 25, 3 (1999), 279–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Scholars have looked at patterns of consumption and culture in late imperial China and argued that their development was in many ways comparable to early modern Europe. See Clunas, C., Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Urbana and Chicago, 1991)Google Scholar, and Brook, T., The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley, 1998)Google Scholar. For a review essay surveying the studies of consumption and material culture in late imperial China, see Jen-shu, Wu, ‘Mingqing xiaofei wenhua yanjiu de xin qujing yu shin wenti’ (New approaches and new issues about the consumption culture of the Ming-Qing period), Xinshixue, 17, 4 (2006), 217–54Google Scholar.

7 Jen-shu, Wu, ‘Wanming de luyou fengqi yu shidaifu xintai’ (Travel and gentry mentalities in late Ming China), in Yuezhi, Xiong and Bingzhen, Xiong (eds.), Ming-Qing yilai Jiangnan shehui yu wenhua lunji (Shanghai, 2004), 225–55Google Scholar; Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 174–82; Clunas, C., Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (Princeton, 1997), 183–4Google Scholar; Yan, Zheng, Zhongguo luyou fazhanshi (The History of Travel in China) (Changsha, 2000), 2–3Google Scholar.

8 Tobie Meyer-Fong is the first to treat tour guides as cultural constructs by exploring their historical roles beyond sightseeing. In this direction, she provides an informative survey on the development of Yangzhou guidebooks in China from the seventeenth century to the present time in ‘Seeing the sights in Yangzhou from 1600 to the present’, in When Images Speak: Visual Representations and Cultural Mapping in Modern China (Taipei, 2003), 213–51.

9 Wu, ‘Wanming de luyou.’

10 Flora Fu, Li-tsui, ‘Xie Shichen de mingsheng guji sijing tu – jia tan Mingdai chongqi de chuangyou’ (Paintings of four famous views by Xie Shichen – the vogue for travel in the second half of the Ming dynasty), Taida Journal of Art History, 4 (1997), 185–222Google Scholar.

11 See Meyer-Fong, ‘Seeing the sights’, 213–16.

12 For example, Chen Jiru, in his ‘Min you cao xu’ (preface to the travelogue to the Min area, reprinted in Chengmeigong xiaopin (Beijing, 1996), 16–17), took great pains to establish the proprieties of you. Such clarification was important since, as Chen cited the criticism of his friend Zhou Gongmei 周公美, ‘many contemporary practices were not worthy of the name of you’.

13 Wu, ‘Wanming de luyou.’

14 See Tang Xianzu, preface to Mingshan shenggai ji (authored by He Tang), late Ming edition, Library of Congress.

15 Wu, ‘Wanming de luyou.’

16 The most significant theory on the operation of social distinction in cultural connoisseurship in the China field was pioneered by Craig Clunas. In his Superfluous Things, Clunas emphasizes the contended social boundaries between the bureaucratic elites and emulating merchants by analysing the late Ming discourses about the appreciation of objects. Clunas’ work has provoked much subsequent research on the issue of taste and social boundaries. For a survey on this topic, see Wu, ‘Mingqing xiaofei wenhua’. However, most of the studies focus on the issue of social distinction. The article takes a step further to examine the formation of new social ties and communities in an age of social promiscuity.

17 Zhongdao, Yuan, ‘Song Shiyangzi xia di gui shing xu’ (preface for Shiyangzi on his trip to visit his family), in Kexuezhai ji (Shanghai, 1989), juan 9, 445Google Scholar.

18 Shangren, Kong, ‘Guo Kuangshan Guanglin zeng yan xu’, in Kong Shangren shiwen ji (Beijing, 1962), juan 6, 459–60Google Scholar.

19 Zhu Zhifan, preface to Jinling tuyong, Library of Congress, rare book collection.

20 Owen, S., ‘Place: meditations on the past of Chin-ling’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 50, 2 (1990), 417–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Yun-ch'iu Mei, ‘Mass-production of topographic pictures’, unpublished manuscript.

22 This practice is said to be particularly common among the commercial presses in Suzhou. See Peng-sheng, Chiu, ‘Mingdai Suzhou yingli chuban shiye ji qi shehui xiaoying’ (The commercial presses in Ming Suzhou and their social influence), Jiuzhou xuekan, 5, 2 (1992), 139–59Google Scholar.

23 Mei, ‘Mass-production’. In addition to the examples listed by Yun-ch'iu Mei, famous Nanjing native painters such as Hu Yukun also produced Nanjing scenic paintings based on Jinling tuyong (James Cahill Collection, Berkeley Art Museum).

24 For Zhou Lianggong and the Nanjing school ‘Eight Masters’, see Kim, Hongnam, The Life of a Patron: Zhou Lianggong (1612–1672) and the Painters of Seventeenth-Century China (New York, 1996)Google Scholar.

25 Editorial note, Jiangning fuzhi (1668).

26 See Bol, P.K., ‘The rise of local history: history, geography, and culture in southern Song and Yuan Wuzhou’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 61, (2001), 37–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Jinling tuyong, 31a.

28 Ibid., 11a.

29 Ibid., 27a, 39a, 16a.

30 Ma Yachen, ‘Citizen's perspective versus imperial perspective: two cityscapes of Nanjing’, unpublished manuscript.

31 The painting is in the collection of the Beijing Historical Museum and reproduced in Hua xia zhi lu (Beijing, 1997), vol. IV, 90-2 and 90-3.

32 Jiangning fuzhi, 2.28b–29a.

33 Ibid., 2.17b–18a.

34 See Hay, J., ‘Ming palace and tomb in early Qing Jiangning: dynastic memory and the openness of history’, Late Imperial China, 20, 1 (1999), 1–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 This point is first made by Richard Vinograd in his comparison of Fan Qi's landscape paintings with the images from Jinling tuyong. See Vinograd, R., ‘Fan Ch'i (1616–after 1694): place-making and the semiotics of sight in seventeenth-century Nanching’, Taida Journal of Art History, 14 (2003), 129–57Google Scholar.

36 Meyer-Fong, T., Building Culture in Early Qing Yangzhou (Stanford, 2003)Google Scholar.

37 Meyer-Fong, ‘Seeing the sights’.

38 See Lee, Leo Ou-fan, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar. Chapter 2, ‘The construction of modernity in print culture’, invokes the idea of ‘imagined community’ from Benedict Anderson and argues that such an ideal had turned into reality in publications such as the photo album Zhonghua jingxiang (China as she is: a comprehensive album), published by Liangyou tushu yinshua gongsi, a major commercial publisher in Shanghai, in 1934. Yet Lee does not take into account that such compilation of scenic images has a long-established tradition and might convey deeper meaning than catering to a newly emerged ‘imagined community’.

39 Jinxiu heshan, 1st edn (Shanghai, 1933), is a selection from a weekly magazine titled Shenghuo zhoukan; it had four editions as soon as 1937 and an updated version to come almost every decade under the same title, such as Jiang, Xiao, Jinxiu heshan (Beijing, 1954)Google Scholar; Xingwu, Ding and Shiqiu, Liang, Jinxiu heshan (Hong Kong, 1956)Google Scholar; Zhiping, Qi, Jinxiu heshan (Taizhong, 1972)Google Scholar; and Zhucheng, Xu, Jinxiu heshan (Hunan, 1986)Google Scholar.

40 The idea of ‘curiosity’ had gradually moved away from its medieval denotation of vice to signify instead a virtuous passion for secular knowledge, as well as scrupulous observation and concern for accuracy of detail. Therefore, the virtuosi came in time to be known as ‘curious travellers’ and travel handbooks were published marking objects for their attention as ‘curiosities’, and designing itineraries that might ‘gratify the curiosity by degrees’. Adler, ‘The origins of sightseeing’, 15.

41 Ibid., 16–19.